This book presents the first systematic examination of the textual and material evidence for disease and hunger in Carolingian-era Europe, 750-950. It draws upon nearly a hundred mid eighth- through mid tenth-century texts (annals, capitularies, chronicles, concilia, gestae, penitentials, poems and vitae) from the Carolingian empire and neighbouring England, Wales and Ireland, in addition to palaeoclimatical, palaeomicrobiological and palaeopathological analyses of the early medieval physical past, in order to articulate the causes, contours and demographic and economic impact of Carolingian-era disease and hunger. This wide range of evidence sheds light on epidemics and food shortages, the baseline of non-pestilential disease and malnutrition, as well as livestock plagues and zoonotic disease. It is argued contrary to popular opinion that disease and hunger, of both epidemic and endemic varieties, characterized the mid eighth through mid tenth centuries, and that epidemics, epizootics and subsistence crises, in addition to intensifying the silent toll of non-pestilential disease and chronic hunger, had major short-term and cumulative repercussions. The study surveys the relevant historical and scientific scholarship and the methodologies intrinsic to the study of disease and hunger in the distant past. It then addresses non-pestilential disease and chronic hunger, and identifies epidemics, epizootics and food shortages in time and space. A detailed investigation into the impact of, and human response to, disease and hunger follows. The written evidence used throughout is catalogued in an appendix in Latin and English.